Data storage systems are arrangements of hardware and software that include storage processors coupled to arrays of non-volatile storage devices. In typical operation, storage processors service storage requests that arrive from client machines. These storage requests may specify files or other data elements to be written, read, created, or deleted. The storage processors run software that manages incoming storage requests and performs various data processing tasks to organize and secure the data stored on the non-volatile storage devices.
Some data storage systems store data in discrete units called data blocks and provide each data block with a physical address in storage. Such block-based data storage systems have metadata to describe the data stored in the blocks. The speed of such data storage systems may be optimized by sequentially writing data blocks, similar to a log-structured file system.